The Rise of the Novel, Updated Edition

The Rise of the Novel Updated Edition The Rise of the Novel is Ian Watt s classic description of the interworkings of social conditions changing attitudes and literary practices during the period when the novel emerged as the dominant l

Title: The Rise of the Novel, Updated Edition

Author: Ian P. Watt W.B. Carnochan

ISBN: 9780520230699

Page: 337

Format: Paperback

The Rise of the Novel is Ian Watt s classic description of the interworkings of social conditions, changing attitudes, and literary practices during the period when the novel emerged as the dominant literary form of the individualist era.In a new foreword, W B Carnochan accounts for the increasing interest in the English novel, including the contributions that Ian Watt sThe Rise of the Novel is Ian Watt s classic description of the interworkings of social conditions, changing attitudes, and literary practices during the period when the novel emerged as the dominant literary form of the individualist era.In a new foreword, W B Carnochan accounts for the increasing interest in the English novel, including the contributions that Ian Watt s study made to literary studies his introduction of sociology and philosophy to traditional criticism.

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O unread novelists don’t stare at me soI’ve every intention to give you a goNow no one should be forced toRead any Paul AusterAnd I think Malcolm LowryIs a little too floweryAnd I couldn’t give a duckAbout Pearl S. BuckBut I should have read a heck ofA lot more of ChekhovAnd I find myself inchinTowards Thomas Pynchon(But Chimamanda AdicheIs she really that peachy?And does Joyce Carol OatesStill float all my boats?Is there now a gulfBetween me and Tom Wolfe?)My relatives frightenMe with Mic [...]

This is Dale Spender talking about this book: 'He devotes three hundred pages to male novelists and restricts his assessment of females to a single sentence: ‘‘The majority of eighteenth century novels were actually written by women.’’ 'This is the jacket blurb for Watt's book:"The Rise of the Novel is Ian Watt's classic description of the interworkings of social conditions, changing attitudes, and literary practices during the period when the novel emerged as the dominant literary form [...]

A clarifying book, written with certainty. Ch I. Realism, the issue of correspondence between literary work and "reality" it imitates: cf Rembrandt's verité humain, not idéalté poétique. Ch II. The Reading Public and the Rise of the Novel: audience not such a wide cross-section as, say, Elizabethan drama, and not "popular" as half-penny ballads, chapbooks abbreviating romances, etc. Though Defoe's stories of criminals! Defoe's audience, the trading classes: economic individualism and secular [...]

Some reasons for my ug-ness.1. Anyone which makes some random comparison to D. W. Griffith's skill in moviemaking (when it doesn't really have that much to do with the subject at hand) to show off your knowledge just shows you're a racist.2. I hate books which assume everything ends and begins with England and dead white men and ignores the rest of the world and the other genders.

In some senses, I guess this book is out of date. Watt deals with the most influential early English novelists, while taking care to show that they probably weren't 'Novelists' as we think of them today. He's not interested in expanding the canon, or arguing that less influential writers are better than his chosen three (Defoe, Richardson and Fielding). He doesn't focus on gender, or race, or class. He doesn't try to uncover inconsistencies within the novels he writes about. There's no political [...]

It's a good reference book for those who are interested in the "rise of the novel" (in 18th century England to be precise). Even though it was written 50 years ago, it is still relevant in novel studies and also accessible for the non-academic. Watt focuses on three authors: Defoe, Fielding, and Richardson, and he also expands on the religious, economic, and social factors which enabled the popularity of the novel and the changes which the novel brought forth in terms of plot and characters. Whi [...]

In this book, Watt investigates the origins of the early British novel by combining the formalist methodologies of The New Criticism (in its heyday then) with historical analysis. He argues that the novel emerges as the consequence of a distinctly new set of social and economic conditions associated with the advent of Western Modernity: the individualist orientation initiated by the Reformation and the writings of Locke & Descartes (as opposed to the traditionalism of the classical and medie [...]

The Rise of the Novel by Ian Watt is a classical study of history of the novel, or it is better to say its genesis in England. Watt analyzes three main English novelists in the advent of narrative fiction: Samuel Richardson, Daniel Defoe, and Henry Fielding. He also explains different types of their narration type from historical, sociological, economical, and biographical aspects while comparing and contrasting their themes and techniques of narration. This book is a good beginning to study the [...]

Watt's affirmation and support that Robinson Crusoe is English's first novel has stood me in good stead throughout my academic life. Others will howl about the anglo-centeredness of the claim pointing to a range of long works which should be considered the first novel. Usually these claims are built on the fictional nature of a narration and its length. But this misses the central qualities of the modern novel, its realism in portray of the human mind and its emphasis on the middle class. It als [...]

A seminal (rather than ovular) text in the study of the origins of the novel. Watt ties the origins to boys and the emergence of what he calls formal realism. This linking lets him focus on Defoe as a slightly inept progenitor whose economic individualism allows him to write in almost granular detail about the lives of his protagonists, insofar as those lives are connected to material goods. So the big hits here are Crusoe and, especially, Moll Flanders. It is when Watt turns to Richardson, espe [...]

Undoubtedly an important text in the discussion of the role of the novel in modern literature. However, there are several glaring problems with it, some of them owed to the age of the text and the changes the past six decades brought with them.Watt attempts to objectively analyse the differences between earlier literature and the more modern novel and calls attention to distinctions in language, topics, characters and narrative principles. Unfortunately, he links them so tightly to contemporaneo [...]

A very compelling take on the history of the novel, both readable and sophisticated, if a bit dated. It's not just for scholars, which is probably why its lost some of its once daring critical lustre.Watt sees the prime feature of the early novel (he begins it in the 18th Century, as opposed to those who date it back to DON QUIXOTE) as formal realism, and that this is an epistemological shift from the earlier allegories and romances. Its clear his sympathies lie with Defoe and Richardson, partic [...]

finally finished this. main claim: lowest common denominator of the novel is its formal realism. this is what separates the novel from other literature (tragedy, comedy, poetry) : its emphasis on the ordinary. defoe, richardson, and fielding, as early progenitors of the novel, all have very different methods of reflecting the world, but they are not necessarily opposing methods, as all are realist approaches. as such, they can be seen as early exemplars/models of the variants of realism that hav [...]

I think Watt is unfairly maligned. Sure, he didn't pay enough attention to women novelists. Sure, some of his theses are overstated. But, seriously, 50+ years after this was written, it is STILL inspiring and thought provoking. Watt is a towering grandfather of the field on novel studies, and the fact that we're still chasing down his hypotheses speaks to the power of this book. It is damn thought provoking, and I find myself wondering and thinking about the ways that he has constructed the rise [...]

I read this book on the recommendation of a history professor to use in a paper I wrote on the effect of novels on society. Ian Watt brought some interested points to the table, but failed to satisfy all the possibilities of novel's emergence and impact.The language is generally clear, but instead of making his points clear-cut he alludes to further expansions developed later in the text that end up leaving the reader slightly dismayed at a lack of coherency. By spreading out his arguments, Watt [...]

This is an engaging book about three of the very first novelists: Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding. It's systematic and easy to follow, but with a lot of content.It is somewhat out of date, and cluelessly blinkered as far as material outside the white male canon, but it's still a foundational work in the field. It's worth expanding and modifying by those who've come afterward, not throwing out altogether. Much of the following research has done just that - expanded and modified.I just skimmed the [...]

First of all, this book is definitely out-dated; it's a little sexist and Robinson Crusoe's desire for only a male slave as company just demands a queer reading, I think. That said, I thought the analysis of the circumstances leading to the rise of the novel was interesting, and the historical perspective is still relevant (though actual statistics not so much). I was less convinced by Watt's readings of the novels of Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding, buuuuuut I haven't read a single novel by any [...]

This book is surprisingly readable. I was a bit frustrated that he set out to argue why Richardson is a more influential writer than Fielding, but he's made me a convert. I still prefer Fielding, but his points are well-argued with clear examples. I wish he'd chosen to write more on Sterne as his thoughts there were fascinating and, as a big Austen fan, I of course loved his assertion that she was the first author to bring the different types of realism of Fielding and Richardson together into a [...]

specifically focused on the section re: marriage and the novel/marriage as a literary themebnote: I might begin employing brief reviews like this for my own bookkeeping of assigned/research materials. Sorry if this becomes bothersome to any of my GR friends!

For a class on The English Novel. I don't know that I'll be reading this all the way through. Only a short part of it is assigned for the class, and I may dip through the rest of it now and again. These lit crit/theory/history books are interesting to me, but they're also very slow going.

A really brilliantly insightful and balanced analysis of the modern novel and its connection to modern individualism--both economic/social and philosophical. Watts is obviously highly influenced by Max Weber; he is I suppose a materialist of sorts, but not aggressively reductionist.

Very interesting stuff. Even if one disagrees with some of Watt's conclusions, the text is still quite valuable for its readable and brisk delivery of historical information and neat readings of three authors who, for all their importance, probably aren't on the top of anyone's 'to-read' list.